Monday round-up

By Amy Howe
on Jan 11, 2016 at 5:42 am

This morning the Justices will hear oral arguments in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, the challenge to mandatory “fair share” fees for public employees who are represented by a union but decline to join that union.  Previews come from Lawrence Hurley of Reuters, who writes that the case “echoes a very different dispute: [t]he recent battle over gay marriage”; David Savage of the Los Angeles Times; Jess Bravin of The Wall Street Journal; Adam Liptak of The New York Times; Howard Mintz of the San Jose Mercury News; Reymond Yammine and Tina Zheng for Cornell’s Legal Information Institute; Jana Kasperkevic for The Guardian; Alana Semuels for The Atlantic; and Brian Mahoney in Politico.  Commentary comes from Daniel DiSalvo in the Los Angeles Times; Kevin Mullin in USA Today; the editorial board of The New York Times; Jade Thompson in The Columbus Dispatch; Robert Alt at the National Review’s Bench Memos; and Ilya Shapiro in The Orange County Register (with Jason Bedrick), the Federalist (with Jayme Weber), and a podcast (with Sam Bagenstos) for Slate.

Other commentary focuses on Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, in which the Justices are considering the constitutionality of the university’s consideration of race in its undergraduate admissions process.  In an op-ed for the Washington Times, Paul Moreno contends that, although supporters of affirmative action argue that the policy fulfills “a pro-affirmative action vision of the 14th Amendment,” “that claim is merely the latest example of academics resting their advocacy of liberal social policies on scholarship that does not stand up.” David Gans responds at Balkinization, contending “that the Americans who wrote and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment” enacted “race-conscious measures, both before and after the proposal of the Fourteenth Amendment, to realize the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws.”

On Friday afternoon, the Court added one new case to its merits docket for the Term:  Welch v. United States, in which it will consider whether last Term’s decision in Johnson v. United States applies retroactively.  Lyle Denniston covered the grant for this blog, with commentary coming from Steve Vladeck at PrawfsBlawg and Kent Scheidegger at Crime and Consequences.

Briefly:

• In the Boston Globe (subscription or registration may be required), Hillary Clinton argues that the 2016 election is “a make-or-break moment — for the court and our country.”
• At PrawfsBlawg, Howard Wasserman weighs in on last week’s order by Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore on same-sex marriages in that state.
• In the ABA Journal, Erwin Chemerinsky lists his best, worst, and most surprising Supreme Court opinions for 2015.